THUCYDIDES, the Greek philosopher, predicated more than two millennia ago that a rising power was destined to clash with the existing power. His theory, which came to be called the Thucydides trap, was based on his study of the Peloponnesian war, whose real cause he theorised was Athens’s rise which Sparta, the hegemon among the Greek city-states, couldn’t tolerate.

The 19th and 20th centuries saw the validity of this theory when the superpowers of the time, Britain and France, especially the former, couldn’t stand Prussian militarism and Germany’s rise as a new power. In the 21st century we see the same phenomenon, China’s rise arousing in the United States feelings that combine fear with unadulterated jealousy. The Americans, it seems, have not forgotten Napoleon’s prediction two centuries ago. “Let China sleep. When she is awake the world will be sorry.”

We will return to this subject after we first deal with the doings of the remnants of a former superpower and its misadventure that evoked among its European neighbours and the US anger combined with febrile diplomacy.

On Feb 24 last year Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin carried out what at one stage appeared to be a bluff and finally became a harsh reality when he ordered his army to invade Ukraine, a former Soviet republic.

The scare in Europe was understandable. Here were what Germans traditionally considered ‘Asian barbarians’ and here were once again Europe’s blood-drenched battlefields. Would there be, they asked, a re-enactment of the debilitating wars that lasted years? To Russia’s use of force, Nato powers had, besides diplomatic verbiage, only one option — economic sanctions which they believed would force Putin to call a halt to his military adventure. The sanctions didn’t really hurt Russia much, because Putin had learnt his lessons from Western reaction to his annexation of Crimea earlier. Besides, the West forgot Moscow, too, had its economic options, the most telling being its power to keep European homes heatless in winter without Russian gas.

The Nato-Russia war in Ukraine, and America’s strategic competition with China have revived talk of a new cold war.

The Russian invasion wasn’t unexpected, for things were building in the direction of a conflict that appeared reminiscent of the Nato-Warsaw Pact confrontation. For Putin what was provocative was Nato’s eastward thrust with one former Soviet satellite after another joining Nato — Ukraine, Russia’s underbelly, being keen to be one of them.

Putin realised he had to assert the power and dignity of what his people have for centuries called Holy Russia and finally flexed his muscles. In March 2014, claiming persecution of Crimea’s Russian-speaking people and organising a controversial referendum, Putin finally took over the peninsula. This was followed by equally controversial pro-Moscow referenda in Ukraine’s Russian-speaking areas — Donetsk and Luhansk.

However, Nato powers’ reaction served to show their preference for a military rather than a diplomatic response. In 2017, instead of choosing their economic armoury to deter Putin, America and Nato chose to send troops and tanks to the Baltic republics and Poland.

The invasion that finally began on Feb 24 last exposed Putin’s weaknesses as a war manager. Here was a man sitting in the same Kremlin where Stalin had planned and reversed the tide of Hitler’s Wehrmacht and finally took the war all the way into Berlin; and here was a Russian strongman, no less authoritarian, whose army had failed to give him the quick victory he had hoped for. The Russian army’s mission, he said, was to “de-Nazify and demilitarise” Ukraine, even though Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is himself Jewish. The Ukrainian army not only fought back but often reclaimed the territory taken by the Russian army. What helped bolster Ukrainian defence capability was generous Western military aid, the US alone providing military hardware worth $18bn. Zelensky rounded off the year with a surprise visit to the US in December.

As the war dragged on and the West enjoyed his humiliation, Putin focussed his attention on Ukraine’s south and east and had some success, securing by mid-November 20 per cent of Ukrainian territory. But in November also, the Russian defence minister acknowledged his logistic failure and said his troops were withdrawing from Kherson. Military casualties as declared by the US were unbelievably heavy — 100,000 on both sides, according to Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, who also said the war had killed about 40,000 Ukrainian civilians.

Gen Milley, however, surprised Kiev when he said military victory was not possible for either side and that Ukraine should negotiate with Russia.

The war had its impact on the world, including Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since World War II, with nearly eight million Ukrainians finding refuge in eastern European countries.

The war also led to a rise in oil prices and caused a worldwide grain shortage, because Russia had blocked three Ukrainian ports. Luckily a solution was found thanks to Turkish mediation, with nearly 20 million tons of grain released for export.

To Western sanctions, Russia responded by shutting off the Nord Stream-1 pipeline, thus cutting down Russia’s share of gas supply to Europe from the pre-war 40pc to nine per cent.

Also a matter of concern for the international community was the possibility of nuclear radiation because battles were taking place near the Ukrainian nuclear facility of Zaporizhzhia, currently under Russian control. Also scary was the nuclear war talk.

Let us also note here the West’s futile attempt to make a moral case for its stand on Ukraine. While its powerful media tried to mobilise world sympathy by highlighting Russian atrocities — and undeniably there are always such crimes in any war — many Third World, especially Muslim, countries couldn’t but note Western hypocrisy. If human rights violations mattered, must condemnation come only when white people were the victims? Why were the Nato powers, they said, keeping their mouths shut on the plight of the Palestinian people and the virtually daily massacre of civilians in Gaza?

China-America tensions

Let us now return to the Thucydides trap and the China-America tensions which again caught the world’s attention when US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met person to person for the first time as chief executives last Nov 14 on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in the Indonesian tourist haven of Bali.

The international media reported the outcome of the three-hour meeting in positive terms, laying emphasis on such diplomatic gestures as smiles and a friendly handshake. But the vacuous declarations couldn’t hide the truth about their differing, in fact antagonistic views on key issues where both politely told each other not to cross the red line. The two presidents had agreed to avoid escalating the current level of misunderstandings and to pre-empt a new cold war.

President Xi declared his country had no intention of changing the existing international order, because the world expected the two powers to “properly handle their relationship.”

On the Ukrainian issue, Biden must have been briefed by his aides that he shouldn’t expect Xi to outright condemn Putin for his war, and what the summiteers agreed on was their opposition to the use of nuclear weapons “in Ukraine” because a nuclear war “should not be fought and cannot be won.”

Yet the bonhomie couldn’t hide their deep differences over some key issues, like suspicion on the other side’s activity in the South China Sea and the East China Sea, besides Taiwan. America believes in the ‘one China’ policy and has no diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but Washington continues to give military aid to the island and has made it clear to Beijing it will defend Taiwan if attacked. However, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August deeply annoyed the Xi government, and Biden told Xi China shouldn’t behave “aggressively.”

On a larger plane, Xi must have known he was talking to the president of a country which had created a four-power anti-China alliance. While this Quadrilateral grouping has an unreliable ally like India, whose sole aim is to treat America as a milch cow and squeeze as much aid as possible to further its regional interests and perpetuate its occupation of Kashmir’s held territory, the Quad also has Australia and Japan. The latter especially has had problems with China for nearly a century.

It is interesting to see the comments by the White House and the Chinese foreign ministry after the summit was over. The White House said the two leaders “agreed to empower key senior officials to maintain communication (a reference to Secretary of State Blinken’s proposed visit to China) and deepen constructive efforts” on climate change, global macroeconomic stability including debt relief, health security and global food security.” However, an analysis of the Chinese comments would show Beijing accusing Washington of duplicity. Said the Chinese foreign ministry: “Instead of talking in one way and acting in another, the United States needs to honour its commitments with concrete action.”

No wonder, a couple of days later and away from Bali’s idyllic ambiance, Xi was frank enough to give the world his true assessment of American policy. In a statement meant for a meeting he couldn’t attend because of the Bali summit and on the day he met Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, the Chinese president said the Asia-Pacific region was “no one’s backyard and should not become an arena for a big-power context.” Pleading for a rejection of any “Cold War mentality”, Xi said “no attempt to wage a new cold war will ever be allowed by the people or by our times.”

That the US regards the People’s Republic as the “only” threat was made clear last October when Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said while releasing America’s National Defence Strategy that China was “the only competitor out there with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, a power to do so.” Another official said Beijing continued to gain more “capability to systematically challenge the United States across the board: militarily, economically, technologically, diplomatically.”

What shape the China-US relationship acquires in the next few years depends upon who occupies the White House after 2024 and whether it will be Biden himself who could seek to uphold the Bali spirit or some Trumpist if not Donald Trump himself who will undo the hopes aroused by Bali.

The writer is Dawn’s External Ombudsman and an author.

Published in Dawn Yearender, January 1, 2023